What a week

Where to start? I've had such an up and down week. Only made about $83 this week, and that was only accomplished because I made $192.66 in bonuses. Yuck.

Party Poker started offering a reload on Sunday. Or at least that was when I found out about it. The bonus reload was made account specific. Some, like myself, were offered 15% up to $75. Others were 20% up to $100 and 25% up to $100. I moved $500 out of PokerStars, which I had just reloaded for a $100 bonus, and moved it into Party via FirePay to take advantage of the full $75 bonus. But this bonus had a twist, and as you are about to see, was more confusing and ultimately more frustrating than any bonus offer I have ever pursued:

• The bonus was 10x, meaning I had to clear 10 raked hands for every bonus dollar earned, and I had only three days to do so. I settled down to play some $.50/$1 limit holdem, but for whatever reason, I lost, and only made about $33 total after clearing it.

• Here's the twist: Once you clear the $75 bonus at 10x, they give you a further $75 bonus at 15x. Likewise you get 3 days to do so. Not caring for the results of clearing the bonus at the $.50.$1 fixed limit table, I decided to switch to NL$25 and try clearing the 1125 hands that way. Holy cow, this was long and tedious. Added to this was the confusion that Party not only didn't list this bonus upon my bonus page [in fact no one had it listed on their bonus page], but you had to keep track of raked hands yourself. Luckily, I could set up filters on my PokerTracker to keep track of my raked hands. When I got to 1131 raked hands, I stopped playing. No bonus. I read their T&Cs and found in the small print, that the pot had to basically be raked at $.10 and not as low as $.05 to count, because everyone's share needs to be $.01 or higher. resetting the PokerTracker filter, I needed about another 250 hands. I didn't want to give up on this when I had made all this progress. Friday [second day of this bonus], I played off as many as I could before quitting for the day. I still needed around 130, and figured I would finish it on Saturday. I logged on Saturday at noon, and to my surprise, the bonus was in my account. I don't know how, and I don't know if Party really knows what they are doing.

• Next twist: Finish the second bonus, you get three days to play 20x for another $75. No thanks. What a headache.

• While pursuing this bonus, I was informed through both InternetTexasHoldem.com and Bonuswhores.com [both of which you can click on their links here], and via email of a few bonuses being offered at websites that I have accounts at. 15% up to $75 at Holdem Poker [a Pokerroom skin], 20% up to $100 at Pokerroom, and a massive 100% up to $500 at Ultimate Bet. Final deposit days, are 3/19, 3/22 and 3/21, respectively. On 3/15 [Wednesday], I decided to pull the $500 out of Party [this would leave me with roughly $65 with which to chase the second leg of the Party bonus], so I could take advantage of all these bonuses. Not so fast! Although Party allows deposits to be made through FirePay, they do not, at this time, allow withdrawals via FirePay. Horrendous. My only withdrawal options are snailmail check and iGMPay. I made one withdrawal through iGMPay, and it took 6 days. If it took this long again, I'd miss out on all these bonuses. I had to get creative. I ended up pulling out $500 by shortstacking some of my pokersites. Paradise [$150], PokerPlex [$150], Sun [$100], and UB [$100], were my choices. This gave me the $500 needed. They all cleared by Thursday night. Then I get my $500 from iGMPay on Friday. Uggh, jumped through all those hoops for nothing. Only real downside was that I got tagged for a $3.99 finance charge moving that $500 from iGMPay from my bank account into FirePay. Ah well, nothing i can do about it now.

My reloads

• Managed to get $500 into Holdem Poker for the $75. I still need about 450 raked hands to clear the original initial deposit bonus of $100. I deposited Thursday, and will be withdrawing today. The $75 reload will be workable after finishing the initial deposit.

• Will get the rest deposited by their end dates. This will give me almost $2K in pending bonuses, with nearly $1500 of that at UB. I will start concentrating on UB in NL$25 to try to clear as much of this as possible over the coming months. I just hope that recent problems with their updated software gets worked out before I do so.

I played three low buy-in multi-table tournaments yesterday. The first one at Paradise saw me go out in the second hour when my AJs was called by A5o, and he flopped a 5. Ugly result. Of course, in the second tournament, I had A5s, and lost to AT when I got no help. Talk about a double standard. At this point, I didn't want to go to bed, so I played a $3.30 MTT at PokerStars. I logged into Internet Texas Holdem's IRC channel and was surprised by all those who were present at this time. niin, TallPaul, wack, Red Devil, Clever, just to name a few. Here is how this MTT played out:

I started on my first table with $1500 chips. There were 705 participating, and the MTT was due to pay out the top 126 positions. The real money was on the final table, and first was worth a little more than $440. Places 100-126 would pay basically 30 cents higher than the buy-in. I was playing this MTT, because, well quite frankly, I suck at tournaments, and at least at this point, don't want to throw too much money into them. And basically toom's article on ITH about the Internet Player of Year and the buy-in/satellite charts to the bigger events, had me longing to play. I printed that chart out, by the way.

Anyway, the first hour on my first table, I was basically stealing blinds [something I'm not real good at], and I basically doubled up, although I still don't know how, as the only real hand I got was AA, and I won the blinds with it.

Second hour saw me at my second and final table with about $3K. One of the first hands I got was AA. I led out with a standard 4x raise, and got called by the BB. Flop came up three clubs, with me holding none. BB checked, and I went all-in. I was determined tht if he flopped the 118-1 longshot, I'd bow out. He called, and showed 77, one of them a club. I somehow avoided demise and double up to ~$6K. People were dropping like flies. I managed to stay at about $6K for quite some time. In fact I rode it into the money. Howevr, I got AA twice again, both times against a Scandinavian man who both times called my all-in with AK, and both times lost to me.

I was moving up in money, but my chip position was constantly at between $4K and $6K. Then came a pivotal hand, and the only donkey move I did the whole tournament. UtG with AKo, I min-raised $1200 of my $4800. Gal immediately to my left went all-in with her $4600. My AA/AK rival from earlier raised to $8K to isolate. Staring at a naked unsuited AK, I thought about calling but folded. I just could think I had the best hand with the betting patterns. It turned out that the lady had K4o, and my protagonist AKo. He ended up taking the whole tamale. Down to $3600, with blinds at $400/$800, I started looking for opportunities to push. Niin commented on how few opportunities I had. Player were raising in, re-raising and I not only didn't have an opportunity to steal blinds, but never had the chance to be first in. Finally I did, and I pushed in EP with A4s. I was called in two places. I flopped a 4 and somehow it held up against KJ and Q8. That got me throught he blinds, but then the antes and blinds increased, and I was back to needing to push. I did so, once again, in EP with 66. My nemesis once again called all-in with AK. All we saw was that damned Ace come on the flop, initially. But right behind it was a 6! I doubled up. Lasted a few orbits, and once again needing to push, I landed JJ. Went all-in, a big stack called with A4s. He flopped a 4 and finished me off when anotehr 4 landed on the river. I finished in 33rd, good for $6.77. Had a lot of fun. Looking forward to doing it again.

I know I keep promising to update my blog more consistently, and I will try to do so for the 2 or 3 of you that actually read this thing. Good luck at the tables!

Oh, yeah, before I forget. Cal Bears lost to NC State. Hopefully Leon Powe will stay another year. Keeping my fingers crossed!